6 SageWoman No.

81 Weaving the Web

 Interview By Nikki Jardin
Photo Art by Elena Ray
via www.shutterstock.com

wheels within wheels

30 years of
weaving womans culture

Motherpeace Tarot with the

d
uring a period of physical and spiritual transformation, a dear
Nikki Jardin is friend bestowed a Motherpeace Tarot deck upon me. Familiar
an Oregon-based with Tarot, and having used various decks for nearly 20 years,
freelance writer. I appreciated the chance to delve into the cards, explore the
When not writing pictures and discover their divination properties. What I wasnt
she enjoys walking prepared for was the feeling of comfort and healing I experienced
through the seasons, almost immediately. I smiled at the whimsical images, enjoyed
traveling to new the roundness of the cards, felt empowered by the written words
adventures in the of the companion book and saw, in these portraits of Amazons,
natural world and Shamans and Goddesses a lineage of strong women that I had
volunteering with only begun to relate to as ancestral elders. This wasnt a simple
her local animal tarot deck created for play and musing this was a history.
rescue group.
These cards bore the faces of
women from many cultures,
instructing other women on
how to use the power divined
within to create, guide and
transform. Unlike the more
traditional decks of Waite
and Crowley (The Rider-
Waite and Thoth), or the
Morgan-Greer that I used for
years, these cards celebrated
woman-as-leader, -healer,
-teacher, and -communicator.

SageWoman No. 81 Weaving the Web 7

The women
of Motherpeace
transcended energy
and time, and
walked seamlessly
between the realms
of imagination,
nature, spirit and
the Goddess. It was
an education one
that I wasnt aware
I needed and
the lessons inspired
strength, confidence
and gave me both
peace and nurturing
assurance during a
tumultuous period. I am
forever grateful for their
timely arrival as I walked
my own path of self-
awareness and renewal.
This year, the Motherpeace
Tarot celebrates thirty
years of providing a tool for healing,
learning and expanding the knowledge
of matriarchal cultures. Since their
publication, more than 300,000 decks have
made their way around the world. The
deck has found a beloved place among
the altars and sacred spaces of women,
provoking praise throughout the three
decades of its existence. Author Alice
Walker has said, The Motherpeace Tarot
has been a wise and loving oracle. A clear
mirror, also, that constantly shows the
truest face.
I had the honor to speak with co-creators
Karen Vogel and Vicki Noble about the
history of the Motherpeace deck early
this spring. Their answers were thought-
provoking, and embodied the passion,
dedication and humor that created these
iconic representations of feminist history.
The two women met in the early 1970s in
Colorado Springs, Colorado while studying
and taking part in the protests and activism
of that time. They traveled together to
Berkeley, California, in the latter part
of that decade to continue their studies,
8 SageWoman No. 81 Weaving the Web
Vicki and Karen in 2010.
photo by Lisa Baiter 2010
activism and spiritual
healing. Coinciding
with their efforts was
groundbreaking work
by Merlin Stone, Z.
Budapest, Marija
Gimbutas, Starhawk
and Susan Miller. It
was in Berkeley that
Motherpeace found its
birthright, as Noble
and Vogels spiritual
and artistic passion
combined to not only
create the deck and
Nobles subsequent
companion book,
Motherpeace: A Way
to the Goddess through
Myth, Art, and Tarot, as well
as Vogels Motherpeace Tarot Guidebook, but also to share
that knowledge with their community. Though I spoke separately
with each woman, I asked them each similar questions as to the
creation and legacy of the Motherpeace.
Nikki Jardin: What were the influences that moved you towards
creating the Motherpeace Tarot?
Karen Vogel Berkeley in the late seventies was interesting
the whole feminist Witch era had almost peaked. Z. Budapest was
going off in her direction and Starhawk in hers. It was starting
to morph into a more shamanic kind of spirituality and that is
where I think Vicki and I were both being pulled, though without
really knowing it. Not that we didnt relate to the European Witch
tradition because thats an important part of who we are but
it wasnt in that sort of formalized way that we felt resonance.
When you look at Motherpeace and how we drew on so many
different cultures and time periods, it felt like we were trying
to pull together a shamanic worldview that has really been so
foundational with us and with a lot of cultures.
Vicki Noble Karen and I moved to Berkeley in 1976. I had
read one book by Elizabeth Gold Davis about ancient cultures
who worshipped the Goddess. Karen and I were interested
in researching the Goddess and womens sexuality. I had also
gotten sick, and was learning about holistic healing. I said no to
Western Medicine, and I started to have all these extreme psychic
openings. You know, weve always felt that our whole relationship
was fated to make the Motherpeace cards.
Karen We got into a flow; it felt like there was a spirit door
that we walked through, and got access to information that
was way beyond our scholarship. This was a time when women
were saying, Okay, theres a whole lot of material that we need
to recover, access, figure out, and look at. Vicki had material
from womens studies and I did as well in my field, which was
anthropology. At U.C. Berkeley many female anthropologists of
that era were thinking, Was male domination universal? Why did
it look that way and how did it change over time? Going back
over the historical record, as soon as cultures were contacted by
European and American colonizers the (male) anthropologists
would go and talk to the males (of the indigenous culture) and
things would immediately change. No wonder cultures look that
way (male-dominated) because its men who have been doing the
field work and writing the history. So as the field workers changed
that is to say, as women entered the discipline the findings
change. At this time, people like Marija Gimbutas were seeing
that goddesses were everywhere. So, we were finding our way
towards cultures in which people were still deeply connected to a
shamanic worldview, to seeing the rest of the world as being alive.
And you werent seeing any of this in the other tarot decks?
white, and male-dominated) but there was
something about the oracular process that
completely captivated me. Tarot woke up
capacities I didnt even know I had and we
began playing with them in every kind of way.
How did you go from studying the tarot to
creating your own deck?
Karen It was lightning fast; within six months
after being introduced to tarot we were drawing
the deck. People were aghast. What do you
mean? You cant do your own tarot deck, they
said. I can understand people thinking we were
presumptuous little whippersnappers to attempt
to do our own deck.
Vicki We were not identified with art;
neither of us had ever drawn pictures before.
My daughters went to live with their father
and I decided they needed a tarot deck. I

Karen No, because it was all Waite and Crowley. I learned a

found one at a flea market but it was missing
two cards. The first one I copied was the Page
lot from each of those decks. They were a good balance: the Waite of Swords, and I decided to change the Page
deck was so straight and medieval and Crowleys Thoth deck was into a young Amazon girl. That same week
so flamboyant. Both of them were useful tools, but I couldnt relate I wondered what kind of tarot deck I would
to them; they just seemed too limited, reduced to that European make, and then created the first image the
world. Thats understandable, since that was where the Tarot came Six of Wands. Its a Shakti image; I think
from, but theres so much more in all the artwork that we were
looking at from prehistory and non-European cultures. Also we
were being really drawn to the patterns that come out of textiles
or pottery, designs that have a certain kind of spirit and deity in
them.

In the patterns themselves?

Karen Yes, in the mandalas or in the weavings and

the textiles and patterns that have been with us for so
long. Theyre like drum rhythms, ways that we access
and are known in the spirit world. It seemed like the
deep knowledge was coming through the patterns.
The designs in baskets, the designs in fabric, the
designs on pottery, and so on all those got put into
the cards.

Vicki, how did you come to the tarot?

Vicki A friend bought a deck in 1978 which was the

first time I had ever seen a tarot deck and and I have never
been so obsessed. I saw the Goddess in the cards; there was so
much of the divine feminine in the deck (even though it was very

SageWoman No. 81 Weaving the Web 9

I had probably seen an East Indian image of
a fiery woman in a wheel, and then an artist
friend looked at the deck and said, oh, so its
going to be a round deck! There was such
synchronicity; it was beautiful, such a flow.
Buddhists say that when the streams come
together in just the right way, thats when your
fate can manifest. And I think we were in
some kind of cosmic flow and everything just
was perfect. Its the most fun Ive ever had.
How did you decide who was going to draw
which cards?
Karen We sort of did the fire-and-water
thing. Vicki being an Aries and me being a
Cancer, she did most of the wands and I did
most of the cups. The other cards we talked
about; we already had a working relationship
so it was an easy process for one of us to
say, I feel a resonance with this
card, and divide it up that
way.
Where did the imagery
come from?
Karen Some of
it was reinterpreting
a feeling, like the
concept that men
who were the primary
movers behind previous
tarot imagery were
afraid of the feminine. For
example, water, as a suit, was
harder for them; they didnt get
that inner expressions often seen in the water
suit werent necessarily depression, just a form
of internal processing. The same with certain
numbers: Crowley believed that the number
7 was weak and feminine; we said to each
other what is that experience (of a seven)
really? For example, the Seven of Swords, one
of my favorite cards, has negative connotations
in many decks, but I looked at what that
energy really is and sometimes that kind of
strategizing and planning on how to get what
you want is totally appropriate. Or with the
Eight of Swords I thought of that card as
10 SageWoman No. 81 Weaving the Web
having to do with anxiety dreams
and ways we can block ourselves in.
Or how crows have laughed at me
sitting there going, Why are you so
serious and wound up?
Vicki There was a lot of
healing happening for us at the
time. We were taking a psychic
class and learning basic skills, like
how to use your sixth sense, making
left-handed drawingsand so the
cards came out of that context.
One of my cards the Priestess
of Cups has one of my left-
handed drawings. We were doing so
much of the kind of psychic work where you go into the chakras
and see whats there in the way of cords and entanglements, and
all of that work was pouring into the cards. We learned that
when you remove something psychically, you always
want to put something beautiful in its place or else
the problematic thing will return. So we felt
that since we were cleansing ourselves of
patriarchy that the Motherpeace images
were positive, female-centered, female-
loving images to replace some of the
garbage we were discarding.
One day I realized that we needed to
imagine a positive male principle or
wed be in trouble, energetically and
psychologically speaking. That was the
beginning of my understanding that
patriarchy is a distortion of the root of
male experience, not its essence. When I
made the Son of Wands I had a profound
experience. I was like the little girl in the card
who is watching and pointing to the male figure, and
that represents my early experience of my dad when he had a
lot of vitality. Later he was really broken, and so creating that card
was an incredible healing experience for me, and thats when we
began to add a few male images in the deck.
Karen Sometimes we are asked about why theres a negative
interpretation of The Emperor in Motherpeace. I say that each of
the Major Arcana represents a different year in ones life, and that
the Emperor represents the attitude you have when youre four
years old: I want to rule the world! That sense of limitless vitality
is appropriate for a four-year-old, but The Emperor represents
the fact that we havent matured beyond that power over attitude
into having that energy serve the good of wider community.
 Vicki and Karen back in the days when Motherpeace was born.
Vicki Its not
like we were trying
to be precise in our
drawings. We didnt
know how to do it;
I had to get a book
about how to draw
the human figure!
It was like rock
art,;thats what we
were working with.
How did the womens community help shape this project?
Karen Because of the time and place where we lived, there
were lots of people who influenced the work. One notable person
was Z. Budapest, who had very strong opinions. That influence
from the community was great because there was that way that
people can have important influences, even over little things.
Sometimes we knew how a card should look, and sometimes we
didnt. Take for example, The World and The Fool cards. Vicki
drew the Fool and someone looked at it and said, that character
isnt the Fool, she looks like she belongs in the World. So I took
the Fool character that Vicki had drawn and turned her into the
World by putting her into a background I created.
Then I made a new Fool character and put her in Vickis Fool card
background. All because of something someone had said. Things
like this were happening all the time.
Vicki There was something about that time that was very
community-based, creative, and intuitive. It was much more free;
Im a very spontaneous person and that attitude was brilliant.
The time when we were creating the Motherpeace deck was a very
special moment, because it took so little money to live; we were
able to support that freedom in each other and support that in our
lives, too.
What was the response to the deck?
Karen The deck was the right thing at the right time and
as a result had tremendous influence. It was an amazing time
to be publishing something like this: there was this alternative
culture, full of independent bookstores and womens festivals
to share it with the world. I took the deck to the Michigan
Womens Music Festival that first year, and then to a few other
gatherings, and it only took a couple of years for that first 5,000 to
sell. There was such a strong word of mouth that it didnt take that
long, and the deck has been going strong ever since.
SageWoman No. 81 Weaving the Web
Vicki Someone wanted to interview me
on the subject of Tarot not too long ago and
I honestly could not think why she called
me until I remembered that Motherpeace
are considered tarot cards [laughs]. I would
love it if there was more overlap between
traditional tarot and Motherpeace but those
are like two different worlds. I wont say that
traditional tarotists dislike the Motherpeace,
exactly; but they just dont vibe the deck
very well. Many women who come to the
Motherpeace deck have previously either
been afraid of or uninterested in tarot, but
Motherpeace is their doorway because it is so
female-centered.
The creation of Motherpeace was so
intuitive. Ive spent years finding the
evidence to document our intuitions.
Another thing that I love about
Motherpeace is how the cards are so fun
and easy, and you can play with them
at a party. They are so non-threatening
and healing, but the healing is a quiet
kind of healing. Thats a wonderful
way to disseminate the knowledge we
were bringing from indigenous cultures,
archaeology, history, art, shamanism and
the Western magical traditions.
11
Its been thirty years since you worked on Motherpeace;
what projects, books, ideas or practices are you working
on now that embodies that same spirit of creativity as
Motherpeace? Is there anything special youd like to say to
our readers in conclusion?
Karen The Motherpeace deck that Vicki and I
co-created thirty years ago has traveled far and deeply
into peoples lives. It has fostered special relationships
with many people Ive met and many more I will never
know personally. Im touched by the profound way that
Motherpeace holds people in sorrow and joy, bringing
insight and guidance. Ive found that the
cards are not so much predictors
of the future as much as road
maps of the many directions
life can take.
Motherpeace is still very
much a part of my
life. I do readings,
teach workshops
on how to use the
cards, and Ive run
the Motherpeace Tarot
publishing business all
these years through a
network of independent
distributors and bookstores.
This has provided me with the
opportunity to cultivate my skills
and passion for many artistic mediums
including carving in wood and stone. Even though Ive
practiced a life of simplicity I could not have produced
enough carvings to support myself without the sales of
the deck.
This past year I returned to painting in a project in
which I illustrated a book called Secret of the Missing
Crown by Sunday Larson. These recent paintings
highlight my unique surrealistic perspective; the book
(Fall 2011) will be available from a link from Karens
Whats New page of the Motherpeace website.
Even though I think Vicki and I are very talented
and work hard, the wisdom in the cards is clearly
beyond simply our gifts and efforts. Im grateful for the
profound joy of connecting to knowledge greater than
what we possessed and that it has provided guidance to
others.
12 SageWoman No. 81 Weaving the Web
Vicki There will never be anything quite like the
Motherpeace project, it was unique in a class of its
own. At this point, I consider Motherpeace to be a classic
terma in the Tibetan treasure tradition. Karen and I
reincarnated to do this project we were born for it.
A terma is received as a mind-transmission, and it is
articulated in the vernacular of ones time and place for
the explicit purpose of expressing some aspect of the
Dharma to a particular constituency. The way Karen
and I came together as consorts, the compelling nature
of the work, the visionary aspects of my receiving the
original inspiration (wisdom), Karens prowess in
getting the images into physical form once we
had made them (skillful means) all of it
follows an age-old sacred Dakini tradition
outlined in Tibetan Buddhist texts.
All of my work since making the
Motherpeace cards continues in the
tradition of sacred women, Tibetan
Buddhism, female shamanism,
and bringing matriarchal values
and principles to the foreground
for healing and regeneration. I
ran a school for women healers in
the Bay Area for several years in the
1980s, and traveled the world sharing
the Motherpeace cards and shamanistic
teachings during the 1990s. Since 2000, I
have been adapting Tibetan Buddhist Dakini
practices for my female students who are not
Buddhist as well as teaching in a university Masters
program in Womens
Spirituality. I bring Motherpeace as well as artistic and
shamanistic methods to all of these venues.
Humanity evolved along explicitly matriarchal lines for
millions of years with women and the Goddess at the
center of communities and cultures. The patriarchal
deviation of the last 5000 years is an unsustainable
aberration. What matters at this time in history is to
simplify our lives and hold close those things that matter
(seeds, practices, languages, herbal remedies, chants, and
the ability to love). It is time to distill out the wisdom
of this epoch and bring it through the needles eye into
the next cycle. May all beings know the Dakini and may
there be peace on Earth. Blessed be. i
For more information regarding this work, please visit the
Motherpeace website at http://www.motherpeace.com.